Meg's new students
Written by Dr.Laxmi Iyer

Meet Margaret Norwich Weatherblown, an entomologist with her hands full of grubs, so to say! She loves researching insects. Margaret is bewitched by insects. Her friends call her Meg while to strangers she is Dr. Weatherblown. She lives in Australia - in a really, sunny place where it's nice and sunny - even in the peak of winter.

She lives in the kind of holiday place that people only dream about. Huge waves, miles of sandy beaches, clear blue skies. The scenic beauty of the place is spellbinding. For Margaret a daily stroll to the beach side morning and evening is a way of life.

Meg is a walking, talking, insect encyclopedia. She knows an awful lot about beetles, spiders, cockroaches, cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, locusts, moths, butterflies, praying mantis, millipedes, centipedes, bumble bees...you name the insect and Margaret can stun you with weird out of this world tales...of companionship, romance, war and terrorism from the insect world.

Margaret is especially fond of caterpillars. Green. Purple. Blue. Yellow. Striped. Spotted. Solid colours. With spines and without. With hooks and without. In armies or sometimes as solitary wanderers.

She stays alone with no human relatives. However, she has a cat family of half a dozen. Margaret is very fond of her cats. Margaret's cats too are a little like her.

Aloof, independent creatures who live their own lives. They turn up for food and then disappear for the rest of the day. Margaret is always too busy even on weekends to chase after her cats to see what they are up to. Each day, when she retires for the night or is at home on the weekends, they all cuddle around her mewing softly and purring quietly.

This year, Margaret decided that she needed to give her house a new look. It has not been painted for years. The plaster is peeling off. Her home has begun to look weather beaten. Weatherblown stays in Weatherbeaten, thought Margaret wryly.

She had put off painting the house for years simply because of her cats. She knew how sensitive they were to odours. She was afraid to leave her cats in the boarding home too! Afraid that they might get the bugs and the vapours.

That's just when her colleagues came up with this wonderful suggestion. " Margaret, why don't you leave your cats in the laboratory garden. There's a little shed too which could double up as a temporary shelter for the cats ".

Patrick, the chief dog man in the group added, " And Margaret, you are the only one with six cats. All of us are dog and bird people out here. It sure is going to be a great experience for us to play with your cats ". That evening, Margaret packed up all her cat's belongings and then grouped together all her cats for the ride to her laboratory.

All was well. The cats loved their new place and the attention that they got from everybody. However, Margaret noticed that two of them - Coral her 3 year old American Curl and Jasmine, her 2 year old half Russian blue simply refused to interact with the others.

All day long, they would watch Margaret while she worked. They would walk beside her. With eyes peeled wide open, they would watch every action of hers. She was studying the life cycle of some rare species of caterpillars. Meg's fondness for caterpillars was only matched by her fondness for beetles.

Ten days later, with the painting work over, Meg brought her cats back home. But things had gone wrong at the work place. For the first time in years, Margaret was upset. Her experiments had gone for a toss.

The last 4 weeks had been hectic. Meg had just not had any time - even to stroll around in her garden. The experiment had not happened the way she had planned out. For some reason - Murphy's laws had swung into action - sending all her experiments haywire! All her experiments had got so crazily scrambled, crumbled and jumbled...it didn't make sense to her. And this had never happened to her.

What was worse, she did not have a single pair of butterflies left from which to start work afresh. Never mind, Meg told herself. These things happen. It was Christmas! Time to forget and be refreshed.

Meg was happy that it was so sunny and warm. She walked out into the garden after a long time - half her mind still trying to figure out what had gone wrong with her experiment.

Absentmindedly, she looked at the plants. The tell tale signs of a major caterpillar invasion. Sunshine dazzled her eyes through a bewitching lattice framework of half eaten leaves. She looked around. Quarter eaten leaves, half eaten, 3/4ths eaten...there were hundreds of such leaves. And huge armies of caterpillars walking around. The same, endangered species, she had struggled so hard to breed.

Margaret couldn't help it! Tears running down her face, she smiled joyous and grateful but unsure to whom - Santa Claus or Jesus Christ. Mature, middle aged Margaret suddenly felt like a little kid whose prayers had been personally answered by Santa Claus.

Then, when she turned around, she saw Coral and Jasmine, industriously walking with things in their mouth to a corner patch. Bird's eggs. Mice or baby frogs..she thought to herself. Anyway today was a holiday and she was just too tired to rescue any of them.

It was like as if after seeing her, they changed their route, walked up to her and dropped what they were holding in their mouth. She gasped in delight, when she saw what they had dropped.

Each of them had been carrying 2 caterpillars each - just like the way she had carried the same species of rare caterpillars - in sets of two while transferring them from one cardboard breeding home to another.

When she walked over to the corner patch, she saw a collection of leaves - the food plant of this specific species of caterpillar...just like the ones she had made in the laboratory.

This cannot be true, Meg told herself. But there it was. The cats had learnt from her simply by watching her.